The F stands for FUN!

Parenting

08/17/2009

Once again I had the urge to delete this blog, but I powered through and here I am. We had a particularly challenging weekend with Carter, and that made me really, really sad. And, as I was cleaning up heaps and heaps of junkmail and crap in our kitchen, I came across FIVE (yes, FIVE) "incident reports" from the last 2 weeks, drafted by a variety of teachers at his daycare. So I wallowed in the muck for awhile, and entertained the idea of giving up this blog/my mom card/my life in general for about 10 minutes, then picked myself up and moved on.

Late Sunday evening, Carter and I had a really fun talk during his bath about Baby Einstein videos, and how he used to watch them constantly when he was about 2.

"You mean, when I was a little guy?"

"Yes, baby, when you were just a little guy WHO POOPED IN HIS PANTS!"

"Ewww! That's sick!" He screamed, and looked up at me with his huge, beautiful eyes, dying to hear more.

I love it when he looks at me. I crave the eye contact from him, and when I get it, if even for a moment, my heart explodes.

After bath, we had him practice how to handle his emotions when he is frustrated at school. I played the teacher, he played Carter, and Brooks played Random Grabby Kid #4. Sometimes we alternated. Every scene ended with a handshake and a promise, "Friends again?!" It was a blast. Carter insisted on playing it about 20 times, and I hope it was good practice for him. I called at lunch and there was no news to report at that time, so that's good. The Dudes should be strolling in soon, so we'll see what happened during the second half of the day. I HOPE he had a good day today.

08/10/2009

My Garrett and I are currently down for the count and could easily pass for bright green goo faucets, if there were such things.

I am not pregnant, at all, and I am more than okay with that.

I finished my teaching training, have decided on a different graduate school, and just started a new position at my job. And no, I HAVE NOT TAKEN ON TOO MUCH HELP ME PLEASE THE PRESSURE.

And Now:

Remember this post? About Carter's diagnosis? The one I think he is growing out of? Well here's a kick in the pants if I ever saw one: I may have to back off on the assertion that he is growing out of PDD-NOS. See? This is fun! As per my tagline!

In the last several weeks, my boy has seriously regressed and has started:

Stimming/scripting hard-core

Begun obsessing over some of his toys, beyond normal limits

Has punched/hit/kicked/bitten several teachers/kids/people

I am so bummed. That's what is so hard about PDD-NOS. Lots and lots of ups and downs. We were really on an upswing for awhile, so the fall is so much harder. Part of what is happening is that there has been little structure at his daycare over the summer, and he has been with a few teachers who just don't have the patience (or education, frankly) to be able to help Carter get through his struggles throughout the day.

Thankfully, the director is totally in Carter's corner, and is really supportive of the suggestions and criticisms that we so kindly force offer when shit goes down over there. We are super model parents. Anyway, she even called him gifted today, which is the first time
I have heard anyone from that school use that word. (He is gifted,
despite his challenges. Giftedness vs. PPD-NOS will be another post for
another day.)

I am so curious to see if his daycare life gets better once the summer is over and he is put in his "regular" classroom with more structure. He likes structure. He needs structure.

In Conclusion:

I think I am pretty much falling in love with my blog. The honeymoon stage is over, and I still want more. I am taking the bumps and quirks and THE INCESSANT TEETH SCRAPING and embracing it all. We're in this for the long haul, I think.

07/07/2009

As I was putting you down for bed tonight, I realized that I don't spend enough time just thinking about you. I spend a lot of time with you, but it's usually amidst the chaos that your brother and Daddy are creating around us. So now, as you sleep in your room next door to me, I just want to tell you how wonderful and perfect you are, and how lucky we are to get to share this life with you.

Besides your sweet, sweet personality, I love your crazy coloring. Your dad and I are blonde-haired blue-eyed people, and so is your big brother. But not you, with your orange hair and ice blue-gray eyes! Your eyes are the first thing that anyone comments on when they see you, and you just smile with your full grill as soon as someone starts to talk to you.

The second thing people comment on, after they get over your eyes, is how big you are. And sweetheart, you are big. We like to joke sometimes that you are our Jerry Springer baby, because, for the love of Pete, you are humongous! I also like to call you "beefy", "hefty", and "large and in charge". But you are totally proportionate, so don't sweat it. You started off in life at almost 11 lbs, so your size makes sense. When the docs sliced me open and pulled you out, everyone in the room started laughing about how big you were! And now, I have this perfect scar that is the length that they thought they would need to pull you out, but, like I said, you were a Gigantor-Beast, so I have this cool little ragged edge to the scar because they needed a little extra clearance to bring you into my life.

Besides all of that, though, I just love how happy you are. Everything makes you happy, and right now, I make you the happiest. And I am trying to savor this fact , because I know someday you will be All About Daddy, and that's okay. But for now, I am your sun and moon and stars. And you and Daddy and Carter are my universe.

07/04/2009

(BIG DISCLAIMER: I am not, in any way, shape or form, giving mental health/medical advice in the post below. The following is an account/analysis of my own experience of receiving a PDD-NOS diagnosis for my son. Please seek professional assistance if you have your own concerns about your kid. The end.)

I have wanted to write this post for awhile now, but I could not for the mother-flipping life of me figure out how to organize it. It's been a year since Carter was diagnosed and 3 years since I noticed that something may be going on. The title of this blog is PDD-WTF, with the WTF signifying the confusion and frustration and ridiculosity that goes with the PDD-NOS diagnosis.

So, instead of making this post all tidy and stuff, I am just going to start....NOW. Carter met all of his developmental milestones either early or on time. He was on top of his shit, I must say, with all of the:

Cute babbling by 2 months

Crawling at 6 months

Standing at 9

Walking at 1 year

Spouting out a handful of words before he turned 1

Stringing two words together at 2

Verbally identifying 12 colors by 14 months

Recognizing and naming all uppercase and lower case letters by 2

Stabbing Cheerios with a straw with stunning accuracy around 16 months

Mastering puzzles for 4 year olds at age 2

Reciprocal socializing from early infancy and beyond

There's more, but I am one of those lazy moms who didn't really get into those "Baby's First..." journal thingies. But that's enough to make my point, I think.

What prompted me to get a little concerned about Carter's development were some behavioral and sensory oddities that I couldn't just accept as being normal. There is a difference between a strong-willed child and one who has temper tantrums that NEVER END. And I get it that kids are picky eaters and maybe don't like so much a good haircut from the local barber, but it seemed like anything that Carter touched or was touched by that was a little strange to him caused him to flip out. Like someone was trying to kill him. So when a local MPH who gave him a simple developmental screening at 24 months was concerned about his slight echolalia, I knew we were heading into Autism Spectrum land. She advised me that although it is normal for young kids to be echolalic, it should peak by about 30 months.

*******

Fast forward to Carter, age 30 months. Still echolalic, although kicking ass developmentally. Well, besides the behavioral/sensory stuff. But to the average person, he probably appeared to be a totally smart & normal child. Although, during one of our many colossal public meltdowns, we probably looked like the Worst Parents in the World of the Brattiest Child on the Planet.

I finally scheduled a Developmental Assessment for him about 1 month before his 3rd birthday. The Developmental Psychologist (DevP from here on) thought he was very handsome and smart, but notices some deficiencies in his imaginative play and eye contact. She also heard the echolalia, pronoun reversals and scripting, but was blown away by his 6 year old level of puzzle skills. I would go through the whole report now, but, as I admitted above, I am lazy. The net-net of it all is that Carter definitely exhibited some autistic behaviors, but not enough for any other diagnosis besides PDD-NOS. I asked her if that meant that he almost had one foot on the spectrum and one foot off, and she seemed okay with my interpretation of the diagnosis. It was almost like she was hesitant to give it, but in the report she stated that the echolalia and other language stuff are not explained by any other disorder beside Autism Spectrum.

*******

Fast forward to now, almost exactly 1 year from his diagnosis. Carter is still a little repetitive in his speech, but it has decreased ten-fold. Still has the sensory wackiness, but that has also eased a bit. Behaviorally, he is doing much better. Eye contact sucks sometimes, but is perfect at others. Pro-noun reversals are pretty much gone...

...which is why I canceled his one-year follow-up appointment for a re-assessment. I feel pretty strongly that at this point, he has one pinky toe on the spectrum, instead of a foot. Sometimes he trades the pinky for a bigger toe, but I think the main thing is that the issues he has now are not pervasive enough for him to really necessitate a label anymore. Now, I do think that this could change when he gets into formal school, but at the present time he is doing pretty well in pre-school and at home, so we're not going to sweat it. He is still a royal pain-in-the-ass at times, but now that probably has more to do with genetics (from me, with love!) and not so much the PPD-NOS. I think his diagnosis last year also was during a time when some of the skills he did not show the DevP were emerging, as evidenced by the crazy imaginative shenanigans he started roping us into not even a month after the appointment.

In short, I think he is growing out of PPD-NOS.

*******

And no, I do not think he was misdiagnosed. I have a Master's degree in Clinical Psychology, so I kind of know what time it is when it comes to the assessment process. Not an expert, for sure, but not a layman either. The DevP was very thorough, and I sat in on the whole thing.

*******

I am sure I am forgetting a whole lot more of the story, and I am positive that more of the details will creep into future posts. Again, this is just our story. Not yours and your kid's, or your neighbor's, or your brother's hairdresser's kid's. PDD-NOS is a particularly interesting diagnosis, in that you can see children like Carter in there along with kids who cannot speak. Sorry for the lecture, but people can get really sensitive about the A-word, even if rightfully so. Because after all, these kids are our babies, for goodness' sakes.

*******

If anyone who read this ever wants more information about our specific experience, totally e-mail me using yahoo and my ID, pddemme. I am here for you, man.

06/14/2009

We just got back from a quick jaunt to Beach City, which explains the break in my 14 day posting challenge to myself. Oh well. I'll just tack on a few posts at the end of the 2 weeks and call it a win!

Anyway, for now, I present a funny little exchange on the road:

Carter (reaching for my iPhone): I wanna play a game on your phone!Emme: What, the matching game?Carter: No, the one with the ghosts that have to eat healthy fruit!Emme: Umm, which one, Sweetpea?Brooks: He wants Pac-Man, babe.Emme: Rad. At least he we have him thinking about health as he progresses towards an all-American pre-teen sedentary lifestyle.

06/10/2009

Carter has a lot of what I irritatingly refer to as "sensory issues." God, that's even annoying to type! More specifically, he hates touching/feeling things that are different. Typical stuff for the spectrum-y kids, really. He has a very limited repertoire of foods he'll eat consistently, he doesn't love getting his hands sticky or dirty, and he is not terribly fond of being touched too much. None of these issues (shut up already) cause too much of a problem for him, save for the fact that he's a little less meaty than he used to be.

The other problem is that mostly HATES getting wet. He can handle a bath pretty decently, but if you don't get the temp right or get too much water on his face he gets a little sketched. He also has not been swimming since he was 8 months old, which sucks because we essentially live on the sun here during the summer months and he really needs to learn to get wet if we are going to have any sort of outdoor life.

So summer officially starts officially next week, and I was so pleased to hear from my husband this afternoon that Carter plans to frolic about at his pre-school's "beach party" on Friday. They are bringing in a water slide (?) and he wants to participate. So off to Target we go tomorrow to pick out a bathing suit and a towel.

I hope he really goes on Friday like he says he wants to. I hope he sees his friends frolicking about in the water and joins in. Peer pressure is actually super useful to a kid like Carter, because he sure as hell won't listen to us when we tell him that there aren't going to be sharks at the party.

06/05/2009

I have been reading blogs voraciously since at least 1999 and I think it's about time I start one. Okay, that's a lie--I've started many. Too many, like at least 10, but they have always fizzled and failed because I was just trying too damn hard to be clever and hip, masquerading as some kind of blog entrepreneur. I mean, just because I used to troll around on old school message boards in 1994 and racked up several hundred dollar bills on CompuServe back in the day did not mean I could just magically come up with a super famous blog overnight.

My husband suggested that I just write for fun (and what the hell, exactly, does he know?) and see where it takes me. He even had the audacity to suggest that I write about something I know, or at least am very interested in. So here we are.

My son, Carter, has PDD-NOS. He is almost 4. I will go into a looooong explanation about how we came into this diagnosis and how it affects my boy, but not now. I am calling this blog PPD-WTF!? because my personal experience with this diagnosis swings wildly between confusion, hilarity, frustration, chaos, and normalcy. Often within a span of just a few minutes.

Not only do I want to process through our adventures with Carter, but I also plan to write about (in no particular order):

--My other dude, Garrett, age 8 months--My husband, Brooks, who is the funniest person alive (Ooh! Maybe I'll get him to guest post)--The town we live in, which can be both great and a living hell--My journey towards starting a PhD program--The fact that I may lose my job in September--My jealousy of others (especially women)--My adult acne--My experiences growing up with an alcoholic mom--The children's book I am trying to write

Huh. That's a mixed bag alright.

So, challenge to myself: Post for 14 days straight to see if I can get this thing off the ground.